German Christmas 2.0

I have a blog problem that I discovered right before we left on vacation. A big chunk of my blog is missing photos (Egypt and early Oman) and I can’t figure out why. The albums where the photos are hosted by Google are empty even though I’ve never deleted anything. According to Blogger help, they only disappear when they are deleted by ME, but I’ve been too busy working and visiting with family to have done anything with my blog lately (as evidenced by my lack of posts). I have them all backed up on a hard drive here at home somewhere, but grrrr. I don’t want to go back and redo all those posts. Anyway . . . I’ll have to solve that problem someday in the future and in the meantime, pray that it’s just a bug in the system and that they miraculously return. 

And now, vacation. We spent the day yesterday traveling from Abu Dhabi to Munich. I can’t remember if I posted about our plane ticket drama or just told people in real life, but here it goes. The Marine Corps is supposed to pay for a trip home for us in between overseas duty stations. This past summer we were entitled to a trip home, but Josh’s unit in Bahrain needed him to work right up until the end of July and his new unit in Abu Dhabi needed him to come immediately to start the job before August 1st. So we requested a delay of our trip until he could take leave sometime in the future and that was approved. We figured we’d use that plane fare to go on one last family Christmas vacation together before Calvin goes off to college. 

At the beginning of November Josh submitted his request to have tickets purchased for our Christmas trip to Germany. The paperwork bounced around between Florida and Virginia and someone got a bug up their butt and started asking why he was even entitled to a paid trip at all since we had plane tickets purchased the previous Christmas — Ummmm, Bahrain and UAE are different countries. A move between overseas locations equals a trip. Look at a map. Read the travel regulations that spells it all out. Do your job. Hours and hours were spent on emails back and forth over the course of several weeks. Travel regulations were cited and the dictionary was consulted and people who couldn’t respond to logic just stopped replying. And I wanted to say, “Screw them!” or worse (this type of problem isn’t that uncommon, unfortunately. Reason #348 why we are looking forward to retirement.)

After praying about the frustration and stress that it was causing for Josh, I decided to get on the computer and see what I could find for ourselves. I had been eyeballing a direct flight from Abu Dhabi to Munich — travel time being of utmost importance to me when managing my discomfort with flying. Those tickets were $1000 each. Completely out of reach on our budget. BUT, Skyscanner showed the next shortest travel time via Oman Air. A 45 min hop to Muscat, then a 7 hour flight to Munich. For $367. Round trip. 

I can talk myself through flying an hour backwards for that kind of savings. I hit “purchase” and told Josh to tell the people in charge of his travel paperwork to suck it. Freedom!! We will deal with them again come summer when we need them to pay for our trip back to the US, but I’m hoping that we’ll be dealing with a new crop of admin by then and they will understand how this Continuous Overseas Tour (COT) travel is supposed to work. 

Merry Christmas to myself — I spent the entire day on airplanes. Compared to other Christmases of late where we visited the pyramids, swam in the Arabian Gulf or sat by the fire in our cave hotel in Turkey, this one ranks near the bottom. But in spite of my apprehension and the fact that I hate sitting on airplanes, the day went well. I wish I could change that about myself, but my previous phobia was so deeply ingrained that I guess I need to be thankful that I’m functional and only uncomfortable. 

They were the best flights I’ve had in a while. The key to my success was upping my meds a notch starting a week before. I also made sure I was well rested and as stress free as possible leading up to our trip. AND this time I bought some big on ear headphones so I could block out airplane noise and listen to mindless podcasts and audiobooks, just as if I were sitting at home on my couch. I’ve tried to read or watch movies, but half the time I feel restless or spend more time looking for something to watch than actually watching. 

Because we were flying on Christmas day our flight was only 1/2 full and I had 2 seats to myself. I could have had an entire row, but didn’t want to move to the back of the plane. The low point of the trip was waking up (yay, I slept!) only to find out    that I still had 4 hours until landing. LAME. I’ve decided that some of my claustrophobia/airplane stresses could be solved by flying in 1st class or business class where I could lie flat on my stomach and actually fall asleep and maybe sleep through most of the flight. Maybe I should start a GoFundMe so I can test that theory. 

We spent Christmas night in Munich and then took the train south to Garmisch the next morning after breakfast. Picking up some water for the train ride (sparkling water everywhere, yay!) I saw these huge bottles on display. Caleb thought they must be olive oil since that’s the only thing we’d ever see in bottles that large at home. Nope, the Germans just love their beer. 

Now I’m rolling along on a train through the German countryside, typing away. Green fields, quaint German towns, and horses roaming the grassy hills. Not too many signs of winter, other than my orange puffy jacket.